Spoiler alert: this article contains spoilers about both the first season of Better Call Saul and later seasons of Breaking Bad.

A spin-off is a dangerous thing (just ask Joey Tribbiani). But it’s even more risky doing a prequel to one of the greatest, best loved TV-drama series ever made. That’s what Vince Gilligan and co-writer Peter Gould did, taking Breaking Bad’s Saul Goodman back to his previous life as Jimmy McGill. It paid off. Better Call Saul doesn’t tarnish the legacy of its distinguished parent; in fact, it has become something in its own right – less epic perhaps, but hilarious, sad and very human. As season two launches on Netflix in the UK, the show’s creators open up about their new baby:

You described Walter White’s journey in Breaking Bad as Mr Chips to Scarface. Do you have something similar for Better Call Saul?

Vince Gilligan: I wish I had a pithy answer. We set out to do a very different show. Breaking Bad was a story about transformation; Better Call Saul has similar bones, because it’s Jimmy McGill transforming into Saul Goodman. The difference is that, for many viewers of Breaking Bad, the more Walter White turned into Heisenberg, the more interesting he became and the more fun they had enjoying his criminal misbehaviour. I think it was a shame that Walter White turned into Heisenberg and destroyed everybody he loved, but there was a visceral thrill to that. It’s something of a tragedy that Jimmy is going to turn into the person he’s going to become. I’m not looking forward to him being the bad guy.

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Is Jimmy McGill a more interesting character than Saul Goodman?

Peter Gould: Jimmy certainly has more depth than Saul – it’s like he had his soul ironed out of him.

He was your character, right Peter? Where did you find him?

PG: It was my episode where he first barged into Breaking Bad, yes – but it is a group effort, and I’m not being falsely modest. I don’t mean to sound mechanical, but we needed a lawyer who was willing to work with underworld people knowingly, get Badger out of prison, help sell meth. And of course he grew from there. Bob Odenkirk was, frankly, originally brought in to play a comic role, but he added depth to the character in each successive year, which sparked us to investigate him further.

So you brought in Odenkirk just for laughs?

VG: I think that’s accurate. Laughs and structure. We felt the need to leaven things with more humour. Things got pretty dark in season two of Breaking Bad. The storytelling that grew organically out of that logistical need is fun, and ironic to me.

Is there a danger you’re getting to Saul too quickly? He doesn’t seem a million miles away ...

VG: He’s not. My fear was that people would be looking at their watches saying the title of the show is Better Call Saul and I don’t see Saul Goodman – I see a guy named Jimmy who doesn’t drive that flashy Cadillac, doesn’t have that ridiculous office with the constitution on the wall. This guy’s not who we signed on for; this is false advertising. I was worried we weren’t going to get to Saul fast enough. Now I’m worried we’ll get to him too fast because I realise just how great Jimmy is as a character. He really carries his own show.

It doesn’t have to stop at Breaking Bad-era Saul Goodman though – it could go beyond that.

VG: Yes and we have seen black-and-white glimpses of the future [an older Jimmy, working in a Cinnabon bakery in a mall]. Realising we don’t have to stop there was a wonderful revelation. So the question is how long does it take till Saul Goodman, and once you get there how much does the audience need to see because they’ve seen him on a whole other show. How far can we continue?

What’s the answer?

VG: We’re still figuring it. There is an inbuilt pitfall because in the future – which is to say the Breaking Bad present, the Better Call Saul future – there’s a big important character who cannot be around. We know Mike dies in Breaking Bad, so then the question is how long do we want to have the show without that all-important character?

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Are all your best characters men?

VG: I can’t help but come at it from a male point of view. A rap I have heard at Breaking Bad was that the female characters suffered, and I was always sad to hear that. I’m not arguing it, there’s probably truth to it, but that never came out of intention. I always liked Skyler and Marie, but other people didn’t like Skyler much and maybe that came through the writing. But we love our character Kim; we have a chance here to have a female character who is beloved across the board.

PG: That’s one of the things we’re proudest of in season two. We go much more deeply into Kim and find out that she’s as much of a striver and a struggler as Jimmy. She’s certainly not there to serve as Jimmy’s conscience; she has her own life and values and she’s had to climb up the hard way, just as Jimmy has.

It looks fun to write. Is it?

VG: It’s not fun, it’s satisfying – which is a deeper emotion. The older I get, the more I realise I don’t want to have fun. I want to be satisfied. Fun is transient; it doesn’t leave you with any profound feeling of accomplishment.

It was a big risk doing a Breaking Bad spinoff . Why did you do it?

VG: It could have been a huge flop. But I had this feeling that if I didn’t get back on the horse after Breaking Bad – if I took a year off to travel the world (which I felt I’d earned) – I’d be afraid to do anything else because I’d be afraid of failure. Jumping right back into this, I said to myself – like a mantra over and over again – “This will probably fail, this will probably fail” … But it didn’t, thank God. Maybe the comeuppance will come this season but I kind of knew in my heart the biggest risk was to do nothing and risk never working again.

Episode one of Better Call Saul, season two, is available on Netflix now.